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3 SECRETS.Indd The 3 Secrets of Happiness: Forever Joy Can Be Yours Dr. Alexander Avila Heart and Soul Publishing International 2017 All rights reserved ISBN-13: 978-1544662725 ISBN-10: 1544662726 Acknowledgements Special thanks and love to: Antonio, my father, The Great Philosopher: May your spirit rest in loving energy and peaceful joy. My son, Andy, the Russian Missile: May you be a powerful force for good and light in the world. My Creative Energizer, Robin Blakely: May the seed of love spread throughout our work together. Praise for The 3 Secrets of Happiness “In The 3 Secrets of Happiness, our mystic guru, Tanaka, guides us with a wise and sometimes ‘tough-loving’ hand through the lab- yrinth of misconceptions about happiness. With Tanaka’s help, we emerge re-born, our egos having fallen away, with a profound understanding of the three secrets and how to nurture happiness in our daily lives. Great lessons indeed!” Dr. Mary Jayne Rogers, author of From Overwhelmed to Inspired: Your Personal Guide to Health and Well-Being www.doctormaryjayne.com. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. The 3 Secrets of Happiness 1 2. The Amazing Story of Master Tanaka 4 3. The 3 Secrets of Happiness Revealed 10 4. The First Secret: Gratitude 13 5. The Second Secret: Joyful Optimism 20 6. The Final Secret: Forgiveness 30 7. Postscript: A World of Happiness 38 About DR. ALEXANDER AVILA 39 v Chapter One The 3 Secrets of Happiness “Happiness,” a wise master once said, “is only happiness if you don’t know why it exists.” If you know why happiness exists, that means you have reasons for it. You have “Ifs” for happiness; you consider yourself happy if you meet certain conditions; if you experience particular circumstances in life. The dilemma is that there are many “Ifs” to happiness: “If I have career or financial success, I will be happy.” “If I have good health and a loving family, I will be happy. “If I achieve my goals, I will be happy.” “If I am a religious person, I will be happy.” Here is the problem: When you have reasons—Ifs—for your hap- piness, then you have equally compelling reasons—Ifs—for your unhappiness. If the relationship or finances goes sour, if the family fights, if your health fades, if you don’t achieve your goals, if your religious faith declines—then your reasons for happiness can easily turn into reasons for unhappiness—into frustration, resentment, and sadness. The truth is that real happiness does not depend on external con- ditions, specific reasons, or favorable circumstances. It does not depend on “Ifs.” Happy people are happy, despite their circum- stances in life, not because of them. Truly happy people live in con- ditions both good and bad; experiencing fortune both lucky and unlucky. Yet, through it all, they are still happy; happiness is within them. 2 | The 3 Secrets of Happiness: Forever Joy Can Be Yours Of course, it’s a blessing to be healthy, have wonderful family and friends, make good money, enjoy a rewarding career, own attrac- tive things, give to others, and so on. Those things can give you a satisfying sense of pleasure, success, and excitement; they can offer you a certain level of personal growth or temporary contentment. But, they cannot, by themselves, give you Happiness—the perma- nent, long-term, rock-solid, immovable, irreplaceable, and invinci- ble sense of absolute joy that makes life worth living. What is true happiness then? How can we attain it? Fortunately, we now have a solution to the happiness dilemma: The greatest psychologists and philosophers the world over have recently made great strides in researching and discovering the dynamics of human happiness. By carefully interviewing and studying the happiest peo- ple on earth, these leading social scientists have discovered what are now known as the three secrets of happiness. Interestingly enough, these secrets do not involve the things that are usually considered important for attaining happiness. Fame, power, money, love, family, relationships, religion, health, or worldly suc- cess are not the determining factors of a happy life. In fact, the three secrets of happiness are not that complicated at all. They consist of three simple psychological traits, or attributes, that the happiest people in the world possess. If you develop these three psychological traits, and practice them on a daily basis, you will be happy, no matter what else happens to you—despite any, and all, circumstances. Not only will you be happier, research shows, but you will also have a stronger immune system, be a better worker, earn more income, have a more sat- isfying marriage, be more sociable, and cope better with daily difficulties. What, then, are these three marvelous secrets, or traits, of happi- ness? They are: Gratitude Joyful Optimism, and Forgiveness. The 3 Secrets of Happiness | 3 You may already intuitively know the importance and power of these inner traits, but knowing these three secrets is not enough. You must embrace them; you must practice them; you must absorb them into your very being until they become you; until they act for you—automatically bringing you all of the wonderful blessings that life has to offer. You will not become happy simply by learning about happiness as some abstract concept or idea. To be a happy person, you need to practice happiness as a daily habit. You need to observe and imitate people who are already genuinely happy. Do what happy people do, and you, too, will be happy. The good news is that you now have an opportunity to learn from one of the greatest masters of happiness. You are about to meet a mentor who will guide you on your journey toward mastering the three secrets of happiness in your personal life. This sage, Master Tanaka, is prepared to teach you the three secrets of happiness. Are you ready to learn? Chapter Two The Amazing Story of Master Tanaka There once was a wise and happy sage named Tanaka who lived in a remote wilderness mountain area. With long flowing hair, a hair- less face, and features that were neither precisely male nor female, this Master Teacher was a mysterious figure indeed. For our pur- poses, we will refer to Tanaka as a man; although that is not certain, by any means. Tanaka could have been a man, or she could have been a woman. No one could really tell. Tanaka’s age was a mystery also. Some said Tanaka was in the mid- dle years of life, others said Tanaka was very old, but looked much younger. People also had a hard time figuring out Tanaka’s nation- ality. Some guessed Japanese, others said Native American, and still others said Latin of some sort. But, no one really knew the answers to these questions about Tanaka. The only thing that people knew for sure was that this happy-go-lucky sage exuded an extraordinary sense of gentleness, kindness, love, and happiness. Tanaka lived in a modest way. He dressed simply, but elegantly, in clothes he made with his own hands. He tended to his garden, from which he received most of his daily sustenance. He also performed his martial arts exercises every morning without fail. Tanaka, in fact, was considered a gentle warrior—a martial arts master who could kill with a light touch of his hands, just as easily as he could heal with those same hands. Some said Tanaka had been a very successful doctor who suffered a nervous breakdown after an especially difficult operation, and had given up the practice of medicine to become a hermit. Others said he came from a very wealthy family and had used his inheritance The Amazing Story of Master Tanaka | 5 to travel the world, sampling the pleasures and sensualities of the earth, until he grew tired of it all and chose the simple, monastic life. Regardless of the theory of how Tanaka became Tanaka, one thing was certain: He was a happy man. Always singing, laughing, and playing with animals or children, Tanaka was never seen sad, depressed, angry, irritated, or frustrated in any way. He also didn’t seem to crave any type of worldly success or approval; any type of material accumulation. He seemed perfectly content with who he was and the way he lived. One day, a famed psychiatrist, who specialized in treating the most difficult cases of schizophrenia, heard about Tanaka from one of his colleagues, and decided to investigate for himself. Through a mutual acquaintance, the psychiatrist, we’ll call him Harry, arranged to meet Tanaka at his mountain residence to learn about Tanaka’s “secrets of happiness.” Upon arriving at Tanaka’s residence in his chauffeur-driven Mer- cedes, Harry was eager to get to work. Harry had brought his two secretaries, and special video recording equipment, to make sure everything they discussed was meticulously recorded. Harry smiled as he thought about how his meeting with Tanaka would provide excellent material for a bonus chapter in his upcom- ing autobiography: “Lessons from the Master Shrink.” The chap- ter would detail some of his theories on delusional behavior, and include his interview with Tanaka, the famous recluse who claimed to know the secrets of happiness. In fact, Harry decided, a great title for the chapter would be “The Hermit Who Claimed Happiness.” Whereupon Harry Meets Tanaka in a Most Unusual Way Upon seeing Harry approach with his entourage and recording equipment, Tanaka came out of his modest home in a quite unex- pected manner: He was completely and unashamedly naked. At this point, Tanaka did appear to be a man, as he was endowed in a certain well-proportioned manner that made an excellent case for maleness.
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